Robert Trent Vinson’s mother and her friends had a prophetic running joke when he was a child.
“They called me the little professor,” Vinson said. “I was always reading history. I would bring a book to the dinner table, and they would tell me to put the book away. I thought, ‘How dare they interrupt my reading with dinner?’”
Robert Trent Vinson, the Frances L. and Edwin L. Cummings Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at William & Mary, studies the continent of Africa and the African Diaspora. At the College, he has found bright students who have genuine interest in his area of study and a university that supports his teaching and research.
Vinson, the Frances L. and Edwin L. Cummings Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at William & Mary, went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a master’s and a doctorate from Howard University. He is still reading history, in addition to teaching and authoring books on the subject. A historian of Africa, Vinson also studies the African Diaspora, which looks at Africans and African-descended peoples around the world.
At William & Mary, Vinson has found bright students who have genuine interest in his area of study and a university that supports his teaching and research.
“Being able to teach courses connecting the histories of Africa and the Americas was vitally important to me,” Vinson said. “History is about connections. It’s rarely about studying a particular nation-state or a particular region in isolation. You have to understand that people have moved throughout history, and quite often they move across borders of countries, continents and oceans.”
Vinson, who has been at the university since 2006, was awarded the Cummings Professorship in 2014. He said William & Mary students thrive in the university’s small classes, which foster free discussion and bolster faculty-student relationships.
“I love to teach,” he said. “When students are excited about the material, they want to know more. They’re digging into primary sources, asking deeper questions and pushing me.”
“They appreciate that their intelligence is being respected.”
Vinson said his classes often challenge students to rethink events like the Civil War, for which they already have a knowledge base from middle and high school history classes. He said teaching the war from the perspective of enslaved people, who saw it as an unprecedented opportunity to fight for abolition, changes the context.
“Now you look at the Civil War as something that just didn’t bring the rebellious states back in, but you look at it as a type of revolution because — in the space of five years — we’ve completely demolished the largest slave society in world history,” Vinson said. “We’re still telling the story, but we’re adding different perspectives. When you do that, you have a deeper appreciation for the significance of the war.”
Vinson’s research often involves travels to Africa and other parts of the world. He said he is grateful for support of the department of history and the program in Africana studies and that of the Cummings Professorship, which provides research funding.
“I feel like the powers that be at the university understand the importance of the research. They go beyond the lip service by helping to provide some of the resources that are needed to do that work,” he said.
Students also assist Vinson with his research, usually through the Chappell Undergraduate Research Fellowships, which are administered by William & Mary’s Roy R. Charles Center for Academic Excellence. The fellowships facilitate student-faculty summer research.
“It’s a reciprocal dynamic because I’m also mentoring them with their projects,” Vinson said.
South Africa — and its relationship with the Americas — has been an interest of Vinson’s since he watched the nation’s struggle to overcome apartheid in the 1980s and early 1990s. He was struck by how similar the images from South Africa were to those from the Jim Crow era in the U.S. Vinson’s latest book, Before Mandela, Like A King: The Prophetic Politics of Chief Albert Luthuli, tells the story of a man he described as “South Africa’s Martin Luther King Jr.” It is scheduled for publication in 2015.
“It’s been wonderful writing about him,” Vinson said of Luthuli, the president of the leading anti-apartheid organization, the African National Congress, from 1952-1967 and the first African to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. “He’s a fascinating figure, but most people have never heard of him.”
Two additional books, for which the Cummings Professorship provided vital research funding, are forthcoming. Vinson said professorships show faculty members that their work at the university is appreciated.
“Our primary motivation is not money. The research and teaching that we’re doing are really important to us, and sometimes there can be a feeling that our work in the classroom and in the archives is not fully appreciated or understood,” he said. “When you get a professorship, it may come with a few dollars, it may come with a little research money, but what really warms you up is that you feel valued for what you do in the classroom and on campus.”